Monday, June 27, 2011

And so it begins... the MOOC, that is. Today is the first day of moocing. It seems as though we have been doing this for some time already. But, we have much more out there than we did a week ago.

The wikispaces discussion groups seem to be coming along. I wonder if I should link them to the relevant resource pages. On the other hand, I should probably just leave that up to the participants that created them. They will link if they want to link.

@Tektrekker was asking if we should just let loose and tag using Diigo, or should we report the tags into the Diigo group. I suppose that should also be decided by the users. Maybe they want to do both?

We have 125 listed in the networking site spreadsheet. Searching the sheet using ctrl+F works well - smooth and seamless. I hope we have hundreds listed soon. There is so much more out there.

I am really excited about the display site for our streamed live sessions. Live panel discussion sessions will be held each Thursday at 2:00 pm eastern daylight, 1:00 pm central daylight, noon mountain daylight, 11:00 am pacific daylight and 7:00 pm London time. They may be viewed live online at:http://www.uis.edu/technology/live/edumooc.htmlYour screen will look like this:

The audio of the panel and slides will appear on the left of the screenThe #edumooc twitter back channel feed will appear center screenA Twitter compose gadget will appear on the right for those with Twitter accounts to upload tweetsThe session will be recorded and be made available online for those who wish to view later.

Small steps, but the journey begins with just one...

At a reception this evening for the retirement of our chancellor - long time friend and associate Harry Berman - our Wepner Distinguished Scholar Dr. Matthew Holden, Political Science pulled me aside. He is interested in delivering a broadly attended class on the Civil War. It struck me that if (help me), we did this again next summer perhaps the Civil War might make a great topic.

2 comments:

Hello, Ray, yours is the first post I read in Edumooc, and it's interesting thai I felt compelled to add a comment here.I'm writing from São Paulo - Brasil.I enrolled Edumooc last week, after an invitation of Wayne Mackintosh at OERu list. I joined the Mooc because I was curious and because I admire the people that are leading it.But I kept asking myself: are we going to learn something new, or is it going to be a metacognitive talk about learning? One always learn something, but my point is that sometimes one feel we walking on circles...Then I was really glad to read here your mention to Dr. Berman's suggestion of a massive class on the Civil War. I guess it may be a concrete exercize of learning, that may show us a lot about the real possibilities of "learning online today and tomorrow".Congratulations for the iniciative!All the best,Lilian Starobinas

How grand to have you join us all the way from Brazil! I agree with you, we are just beginning tot learn about the potential of MOOCs, so we tend to tread areas comfortable and close to us. We need to reach out and expand beyond meta-topics in education. We hope to learn much in this experience, then we will be prepared to move forward as you suggeest.

I am excited to know that a study page has been created for those who want to discuss in Portuguese: http://edumooc.wikispaces.com/eduMOOC+for+Portguese .